Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk]

By Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain, with Patrick Dodson and collaborators

Challenging, joyful and deeply affecting, Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] is a dance, sound, and installation work that confronts Australia’s shameful fixation with incarceration. Exceptionally talented dancers draw on cultural and community experience to move deftly between horror, truth-telling, and bodily resistance.

At the forefront of cultural expressive integrity, Marrugeku is an unparalleled presence in Australia today. Dedicated to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians working together, they develop new dance languages that are restless, transformative and unwavering.

Designed by leading Western Australian visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, co-created with Yawuru leader Patrick Dodson, Kurdish-Iranian writer and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani, and Iranian-Australian scholar-activist Omid Tofighian, this is an exquisite work of great sophistication that throbs with sadness, anger and joy.

Brutally beautiful, it will arrest your attention, dare you to look away, and dream of the day we will know solidarity in difference.